“She wants to come with me and buy her ring, Mrs. Greeve,” Reid remarked carelessly, for he, probably more than her mother, had sensed the note of nervous strain in Leslie’s voice. “I’m going to run her over to Pencaster in my car this afternoon, so that she can choose what she likes.”
“Oh—” began Leslie, rather startled.
But the small exclamation was lost in the smiling, indulgent emphasis with which her mother said,
“Why, of course! Enjoy yourself, darling, and don’t worry about Morley. I’ll tell him. You go and have every bit of pleasure you can. I don’t want you to remember this as a day of anxiety. It’s a day of great rejoicing too.”
“Thank you,” Leslie said softly. And for a moment the difference between reality and romantic deception weighed on her so heavily that she felt the tears come into her eyes.
The moment she and Reid were alone together, she exclaimed,
“I don’t know that I meant to force things as far as this!”
“As far as what?” He looked surprised.
“Oh, a ring and everything.”
He laughed in good-humoured derision.
“There’s woman’s logic for you! You haven’t winced over the boldest measures, and now you shy at a little thing like a ring.”
“It’s not a little thing, Reid. It’s a symbol.”
“Well, come along and let’s find you the handsomest symbol we can,” he returned, unmoved.
And presently Leslie found herself beside him in his car with a fleeting thought for how much had happened since she last sat there driving through the alternating showers and sunlight to Pencaster.
Reid, as she had expected, proved well able to find exactly what he sought with the minimum of fuss.
Leslie thought she remembered hearing once that “diamonds always command their value.” And so, with the vague idea of ensuring Reid against too heavy a loss when the ring had to be returned, she chose a diamond ring, with a light but curiously beautiful setting.
“Like it?” he asked with a smile, when it was safely on her finger.
“Very much,” Leslie assured him.
But a few minutes later she saw him glance at it restlessly and a little moodily, and she supposed he was thinking, not unnaturally, how much rather he would have put it on another girl’s hand. To be confident of the success of one’s little escapade was one thing. To enjoy the counterfeit of what should have been a cherished reality was very much something else.
On the whole, she felt sorry for Reid in that moment.
He took her out to tea, and she realized, rather to her amusement, that they found each other good company. Not that they had a great deal in common, she supposed. At least, not in their special interests, or their way of looking at life.
But perhaps having so few secrets from each other made a difference. They had been so ruthlessly frank with each other, stripping every bit of romantic or even social pretence from their relationship. What was left was a good-humoured, half-cynical understanding of each other which made conversation remarkably refreshing and simple.
When she came to think of it, each probably knew more of the other than anyone else of their acquaintance.
It was a sobering thought, that. To imagine that this, smiling, confident half-stranger sitting opposite her knew more of her inmost thoughts and feelings than her own mother did, or her brother or sisters, or the man she really loved.
“It’s an odd relationship,” she said aloud.
He raised his eyebrows and smiled at her, but made no pretence of not understanding her.
“Rather satisfying though,” he countered consideringly. To which she agreed, with a half-reluctant laugh.
And then Caroline came into the restaurant, and right up to their table and almost past them before she realized that they were there.
“Hello, you two!” She paused, her slow beautiful smile in evidence, but her big dark eyes widening, as Reid rose to his feet to greet her with careless friendliness. “What brought you here?”
“We drove into Pencaster to have tea,” Leslie said a little quickly, because she flinched suddenly before the final dramatic disclosure.
“We drove into Pencaster to buy an engagement ring,” amended Reid good-humouredly. “Leslie and I have just got engaged.”
Leslie watched, fascinated, as the lazy calm of Caroline’s usual expression splintered before her eyes. Just for a moment she saw the dark, strong currents of emotion which ran below the usually unruffled surface, and she was not quite sure if she were frightened or elated or apprehensive.
Then Caroline, with a tremendous effort, regained her normal expression, and in a voice which hardly even trembled she said,
“Engaged? But you can’t be. Oh, no, really that’s quite impossible.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE COOL reasonableness of the tone in which Caroline uttered her objection to their engagement shook Leslie. It seemed to imply that she was about to produce some overriding argument which would reduce to absurdity the very idea of such an engagement—real or fictitious.
But if Leslie’s sense of security crumbled, Reid’s showed itself cheerfully impervious to this form of attack. On the contrary, it was he who reduced Caroline’s objection to absurdity by saying,
“My dear, incredulous Caroline, it is not only possible, but an accomplished fact. There is no known cause or just impediment, you know,” and for a moment his eyes glittered dangerously. “Why should you think an engagement between Leslie and me so impossible?”
She was shaken in her turn.
“It’s so sudden—such short notice.” She was still standing by the table, having brushed aside Reid’s invitation to join them, and her glance drifted puzzledly over Leslie, as though seeking to find in her some explanation of the inexplicable.
Leslie withstood the glance admirably, and said quite gently,
“I feel as though it’s very sudden and almost unbelievable too. But that doesn’t make it any less wonderful.”
She thought for a moment that she had overplayed her part. The breathless way she had said “wonderful,” for instance, sounded almost touching, even to her own ears.
But Reid seemed well satisfied.
“You see, my dear,” he said pleasantly to Caroline. “I think you are answered.”
It was not in Caroline to be completely routed.
She remained for a minute or two, offering cool congratulations now, and asking perfunctory questions, such as when were they going to be married?
“Soon,” declared Reid, before Leslie could commit herself. “Leslie has had too much worry lately. I want to give her a little happiness and gaiety.”
“In Paris?” Caroline’s glance slid over him with a degree of significance which Leslie curiously resented.
“We might spend part of our honeymoon in Paris,” Reid agreed. “What do you say?” And he smiled an indulgent query at Leslie.
“That would be lovely. I’ve never been to Paris.”
“You’ll enjoy showing Paris to someone who’s never seen it, won’t you?” Caroline said.
Then she apparently saw an acquaintance the other side of the room, and she nodded carelessly to Reid and Leslie and moved away.
For almost a minute after she had gone there was silence between them. Then Reid said softly and amusedly,
“The value of shock tactics.”
“Do you think they—worked?”
“At least we arrested her attention.”
“Oh, certainly.”
Reid glanced at her sharply.
“Weren’t you satisfied with our degree of success?”
“I don’t know—” Leslie moved uneasily. “You know her better than I do. But I thought it was more a question of—of pique, than horrified realization of a mistake on her own part.”
He frowned impatiently.
“One doesn’t expect to reverse the whole position at one blow.”
“No, of course not. Only—”
/>
“Yes?”
“Oh, sometimes it seems to me that we just plunge deeper and deeper into a very doubtful situation, without achieving much of what we hope to do.”
He grinned, however, at that.
“You’re not a natural gambler, darling,” he said, patting her hand as it lay on the table. “I know what shook you. The talk of a Paris honeymoon, wasn’t it?”
She flushed and laughed reluctantly.
“No—not really. Except that it seemed to make everything alarmingly real and detailed all at once. But it’s all right. I was just being silly, I expect.” Then she glanced at him curiously and said, “You both know Paris very well, don’t you?”
“As far as two people in love ever know a place which is simply a background to their happiness.”
She gave him a smile of warm sympathy and exclaimed impulsively, “Oh, I hope you get her, if you really want her so much!”
“Definitely withdrawn your backing from Oliver, eh?” he asked teasingly.
“Oh—Oliver” She had forgotten about him for the last half-hour. “I wasn’t backing Oliver anyway, as you most vulgarly put it. Surely I’ve done enough to show I don’t want him to marry Caroline!”
“Yes, yes. I was really thinking of how eagerly you canvassed dear Oliver’s happiness, as being the most important thing in all this.”
“I still think his happiness most important,” she countered a little resentfully.
“Fine,” he said rather dryly. And then they rose to go.
She thought how amazing his self-control was, that he even managed to leave the place without so much as a backward glance at where Caroline was sitting.
If it had been Oliver who was sitting there, could she have done as much? She thought not.
At home once more, she received the fresh congratulations and comments of her family on her beautiful engagement ring, and contrived to look happy and carefree, even when Alma put her own thoughts into words with a reflective, “It seems to make it much more real, when you wear a ring.”
Leslie turned away quickly and said, “Did you tell Morley, Mother?”
“Oh, yes, dear. He said he thought he’d seen something like that coming.”
She laughed incredulously and with a good deal of relief.
“He said that? In what tone exactly?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, was he pleased, dissatisfied, sceptical, shocked—what?”
Her mother laughed in her turn.
“I couldn’t say, my dear. You’ll have to find that out yourself.”
“Can I go and see him now?”
“No. I think I’d leave him to rest, if I were you. He was a good deal exhausted by the examination and is probably sleeping now.”
“Of course.”
“But if you want to do something, I wish you’d pop over to Dr. Bendick’s surgery, Leslie, and get his medicine.”
“Why, yes. I’ll go at once.”
Not at all displeased to escape on her own and have a respite from playing her rather exacting role, Leslie slipped on a coat and went out by the side gate. It was a pleasant walk to the Bendicks’ house, and if she only knocked at the surgery entrance she could probably escape seeing either the doctor or his wife, and avoid any further comment or question.
Oliver, she was sure, would have returned to his job by now.
But in this she had miscalculated. Leslie had only just received the medicine at the hands of the surgery assistant and turned away to take the path home through the woods, when Oliver’s voice hailed her, urgently—even a little peremptorily—and he came quickly along the garden path to overtake her.
“Hello. I thought you’d gone back.”
“No. I’ve some extra time. But what’s this extraordinary story Father’s got hold of?”
“About Morley?”
“No. About you.” He fell into step beside her, with a purposeful air which said that he was accompanying her until he had found out all he wanted to.
She felt her heart flutter dangerously and her breath come a little unevenly, but she managed to say quite calmly,
“Oh, you mean my engagement. I know it’s very sudden, but it’s quite true. I’m engaged to Reid.”
“But you can’t be! I never heard of such nonsense. You’ve not known the fellow a week. And, anyway, he’s simply not your sort.”
“Oliver dear, are you so sure you know what ‘my sort’ is?”
“Of course I do. I’ve known you all your life, haven’t I?”
“And never guessed the most important thing about me,” thought Leslie, with faintly bitter amusement.
Aloud she said, “I don’t know that that helps much. I was just a bit surprised that Caroline appealed to you quite so powerfully. I don’t think even the best of friends are very good at guessing things about each other when it comes to falling in love.”
“But, Leslie—” He was evidently deeply disturbed, and she thought how much she loved him for it. “I don’t think you even know this Reid well enough to have made up your mind properly. You’re usually so well-balanced, so—so sane and unhurried. This whole business isn’t a bit like you.”
She laughed—without much effort, because it made her feel light-hearted, and just a little light-headed too, to have Oliver worrying about her in this way.
“But, Oliver, you can’t expect anyone to be well-balanced and sane over falling in love. It’s a contradiction in terms, surely?”
He looked at her gloomily and said,
“You really are in love with him, then?”
“Why, of course. You don’t think I would—would marry for any other reason, do you?”
“Yes. That was the very thing I was afraid of,” he assured her with some grimness. “I thought you were marrying him because he’d inherited all your great-aunt’s money, and you didn’t see how the hell the family was going to manage if you didn’t do something—”
“I suppose it’s bound to look a bit like that,” she conceded, with a judicial air which she privately thought rather good. “But that isn’t what decided me, Oliver. Really and truly it isn’t.”
“You’re asking me to believe that you’ve fallen so hopelessly and romantically in love with this comparative stranger that, in the course of a couple of days, you’re quite sure you want to spend the rest of your life with him? Leslie, do think again. I’m sure you’re making the most dreadful mistake.”
“What you mean is that you don’t like him,” Leslie retorted, and because she did like Reid, the faint hostility in her voice was genuine.
“I can’t stand him,” agreed Oliver with great heartiness “I think he’s self-confident to a degree, and cynical and arrogant too. And I think you’re being silly and wilfully blind, just because he’s good-looking and rich and excessively male.”
“Oliver!”
There was an astonished silence. Then he said, in a slightly shamed tone,
“I’m sorry I called you silly.”
“Oh, it’s not that.” She brushed the mild insult aside. “Do you really see Reid like that?” she asked curiously.
“More or less.”
“You’re quite wrong, you know. Suddenly she found herself most anxious to justify Reid to Oliver. “He isn’t a bit like that.”
“Not self-confident?” he queried dryly.
“Well—” She laughed.
“Or arrogant, or cynical? My dear Leslie, use your excellent judgment!”
“It’s a very good-natured cynicism, Oliver.”
“You rather like it? Good God, girl,” exclaimed Oliver, who had never addressed her like that in her life before, “do you realize-you’re talking about the qualities of the man you say you love? One doesn’t ‘rather like’ things about the person one proposes to marry.”
“Do you more than rather like the way Caroline looks at other men?” she asked suddenly, and then was astonished that she could speak so coolly and ironically to Oliver.
“Caro
line doesn’t enter into this,” he said stiffly, after another astonished little silence.
“Oh, yes, she does! Believe me, I’m quite as much surprised at your choice as you are at mine,” exclaimed Leslie, suddenly feeling some wise precaution in her collapse, so that she had a horrid feeling that she was going to say things for which she would be sorry, while being powerless to stop herself. “If anyone had told me beforehand that Caroline was the kind of girl to attract you, I’d have said ‘Nonsense’ in my turn. But it’s your own business. I’m not trying to dissuade you from marrying her, am I? I’ve given you my congratulations and decided to mind my own business. Even if you decide afterwards that you made a mistake and don’t want her after all, I’m not going to say ‘I could have told you.’ It’s for you—”
“I should hope not, indeed!” He was nearly as indignant as she by now. “And what on earth should give you the idea that I might change my mind about Caroline? I never heard of anything so ridiculous, and I very much resent it.”
Aloud she said, making a great effort to speak calmly,
“I’m sorry, Oliver. It wasn’t very tasteful of me to use your own circumstances to reinforce my argument. But we’re both being rather angry and ill-balanced about this. Don’t you think we ought to agree not to interfere with each other?”
“Leslie—” He took her arm, and he too had lost his anger now. “I don’t mean to interfere, my dear. But you mean a great deal to me—you’re like my own family—”
“I know. Like a sister,” she said, and somehow she kept the irony out of her voice that time.
“Well—something like that. I can’t help knowing that neither of your parents would give you much good advice over this. Your father will see only the material advantages, particularly to himself, and your mother, bless her, will be swayed this way and that by her sentiment and her desire to think the best of everything. Morley’s in no condition to take a hand. I can’t let you do this thing without protesting. There was a time when you’d have conceded my right to do so. I seem to have lost touch with you, Leslie, and I don’t know whether I am to blame myself or not.”
“You’re not to blame in any way,” she assured him quickly. “And I don’t really mind your talking to me, Oliver dear. Only I can’t have you speaking against Reid. You must see I can’t.”
Tell Me My Fortune Page 9
